Despite down economy and loss of Shaboom, festival posts 1
percent attendance gain
As she extinguished the giant metal garlic bulb for the final time Sunday night and hopped into a fire engine to leave Christmas Hill Park, outgoing Garlic Festival President Kirsten Carr began to cry.
“These people have worked hard for so long, and to watch that success just means the world to me,” she said.
Carr shared her appreciation with those volunteers during a special dinner after the gates closed on the 31st annual Gilroy Garlic Festival and the heat died down. In front of the festival’s board of directors and dozens of committee chairs and assistants gathered, Carr passed the torch to Greg Bozzo, who will lead next year’s gala after this year’s success.
“Our attendance was 1 percent over last year. Everyone was worried about whether we’d make the mark, but our numbers actually went up,” Carr said. “After doing this for 31 years, we’ve been really good with all the planning. It seriously is the culmination of 365 days of work, and it shows what the community of Gilroy can do.”
Built on the backs of about 4,000 volunteers, the festival attracted 108,519 people, dedicated fans and newcomers alike. That included Gilroy resident Bill Clark, 54, who only missed one Gilroy Garlic Festival – the first one – and that’s because he was a little busy marrying his wife. The happily married couple of 30 years staked out a spot in front of the infamous flame ups of Gourmet Alley first thing Friday morning, the 6-foot-tall tower of flames kept them warm against the cool morning breeze.
Only one day out of the year can Clark get away with stuffed mushrooms and beer for breakfast, he said.
“Every year, it’s gotten better,” he said. “We always come out on Friday. It’s vacation day every year.”
Wearing matching shirts celebrating the 2007 and 2008 festivals, the couple held up a bag carrying this year’s commemorative shirt. Janine Clark eventually plans to make a quilt out of the shirts, she said.
After the morning fog burned off, the afternoon heated up inside Gourmet Alley as the pyro-chefs’ antics elicited oohs and aahs from the growing crowd of onlookers.
As one woman passed, a pyro-chef’s flame shot five feet in the air.
“I do that all the time in the kitchen – it’s just not called cooking,” she quipped.
Inside the Alley, volunteers plowed through supplies like olive oil, garlic bread and spices with lightening speed. Saturday alone, visitors consumed more than 200 gallons of olive oil and about 1,000 loaves of bread, said Steve Ashford, a quality control engineer.
Thanks to the swarm of volunteers inside Gourmet Alley, Denise Madril and her grandmother, Jennie Charles, enjoyed pepper steak, penne con pesto, mushrooms and scampi. Charles said she has attended every festival since 1979, and Madril said she’s come since “I couldn’t walk.”
“We just love this place. I have sisters and nieces from Phoenix who also come here,” Charles said. As she dipped her bread into scampi sauce, Charles looked out into the crowd, perched on the same bale of hay as her granddaughter.
“I love people-watching,” Charles said as Madril nodded her head in between chews.
“We came here today just to eat,” Madril said Friday. “Tomorrow for the entertainment and dancing and to have fun, but I don’t know what it’s going to be like this year without Shaboom. Just bring back Shaboom,” she said, referring to the classic rock cover band that was a mainstay for the festival until this year.
This year, country-blues singer-songwriter Shane Dwight filled the Saturday afternoon slot at the Amphitheater stage and whipped young festival goers into a frenzy.
“It’s great to be back,” the San Jose native said of his return to the West Coast from Nashville. “This crowd is amazing.”
While some were drawn to the festival for the food and entertainment, others come for the shopping. Over at the Garlic Mercantile, the pickings were slim Sunday afternoon, with only three boxes of the festival’s signature wine glasses and several other items long gone. The popularity of such items pleasantly surprised Assistant Chair of Retail Janet Krulee.
“With the economy, we were afraid things would be a little slow,” she said.
But the women’s fitted shirts with the festival’s logo sold out as early as Friday and the iridescent, garlic bulb ornaments were gone by Saturday. But it was the absence of Herbie, the garlic bobbleheaded doll that’s become the festival’s unofficial mascot, that evoked the most disappointment. Dismayed that Herbie wouldn’t be making an appearance this year, Anna Lavigne of Fremont made a point to speak up about the beloved doll.
“I’ve heard a lot of people asking about him,” she said, her sun hat adorned with various garlic pins she’d collected over the years. “I have almost all of them and would pay even if they did raise the price.”
This year, the festival’s organizers decided to temporarily part with Herbie due to increased manufacturing costs, Carr said.
Judy Marez, 77, shared Lavigne’s disappointment over Herbie’s absence. Marez herself submitted several ideas for the doll over the years, including an Elvis version that read, “All shook up at the Garlic Festival,” and said she would have paid $50 for a Herbie doll. She has one from each year displayed in her china cabinet at home, she said.
Unfazed by Herbie’s absence, Christina Day had so much fun at the last two festivals that she recruited three friends to join her this year.
Vibrant, sizzling, scrumptious and stinky – those were the words Day and her friends – Niki Simons of Chico, Kristina Ignagni of Gilroy and Samantha Buttler of Yuba City – used to describe the festival Sunday afternoon as they stood outside a shuttered garlic ice cream tent that sold out hours before.
“The heat is a serious factor, but the beer gardens are the best,” Day said as her friends rattled off their favorite foods of the day – artichokes, mushrooms, pepper steak.
Just outside the beer tent near Gourmet Alley, City Administrator Tom Haglund checked identifications. One eager underage attendee tried to trick him with a photocopied driver’s license, but other than that, Haglund’s day was relatively cool in the shade.
“This just makes you realize the substantial undertaking of the community, and the volunteers are amazing … It’s quintessential Gilroy,” he said Sunday.
Haglund also volunteered in the Rotary wine tent Saturday.
“I prefer beer,” he joked.
Although most drank in moderation, many of the arrests and calls for medical service at the festival were alcohol-related, police and paramedics reported. Paramedics transported about a dozen visitors to the hospital by Saturday afternoon, said Marcie Lee Morrow, spokeswoman for American Medical Response. Police arrested 18 people over the weekend, mostly for alcohol-related violations. However, police arrested one visitor for assault on a horse, which equates to assault on a police officer, police said.
A few alcohol-fueled tempers may have flared, but Sgt. Jim Gillio said this year’s visitors “seemed like a good crowd.”
Festival enthusiast Shirley Colson, 45, agreed.
“The festival is all about the diversity, the food and how welcoming Gilroy is,” she said.
Even when she lived in San Diego for 14 years, she made the trip up to Gilroy every year for the festival.
“It’s a family tradition,” she said. “If you go to any festival during the year, you have to go to the Garlic Festival.”
